


All Part of the Job

by inkycompass



Category: Final Fantasy V
Genre: Gen, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27896038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkycompass/pseuds/inkycompass
Summary: Who were the ancient warriors in the crystals, and why did they end up in the ones they did? A pirate and a princess already dealing with one difficult relationship have to grapple with even more.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

A nearby brook made an adequate spot for Faris to rinse off the two new pieces of crystal as Bartz soothed the unfortunate chocobo that had coughed them up. The fragments felt warm to the touch even in the flowing water, leaving no doubt that they had been thrown from the exploding Fire Crystal. Faris thought about the location of Crescent Island relative to Karnak and quickly decided he was _not_ going to think about what would have happened if any of them had been standing in the way.

He felt someone come up behind him--Lenna, crouching down to look over his shoulder. "Are they more warriors?"

Faris dried the shards off with a handful of coat and felt the spirits within stir. "Seems that way." He held them up to the light, one in each hand. The first crystal held a ghostly image of soft greens and browns and the outline of a bow. "Looks as though our new mates are a forest ranger..." The second--he frowned. Satin, ribbons, sandals with straps winding up to the knee? "...and some kind of beribboned fop."

"Faris," Lenna laughed, taking the crystal to examine it herself. "This person was a bard. Don't you see their harp?"

Faris glared at it. "Bards aren't warriors."

"This one must have been."

Faris made a dissatisfied noise in his throat. It was easy for Lenna. Most of the Water Crystal's spirits were easy for her to get along with. The time mage had its interesting spells, mystic knight let her exercise her aptitude both for magic and her aptitude for physically rushing towards things that threatened anyone in her line of sight, and if anyone was going to summon powerful magic beasts as friends, it would be Lenna. But of the warriors that slept in the Fire Crystal--Faris wasn't going to admit anything like this out loud. But he had assumed that they would be like him. Instead there was a monster enthusiast who dressed like a sheep, an oddball mage who thought that a clown suit was appropriate battle gear, and a ninja. That last one was at least a proper fighter, but he'd still had to browbeat it into giving him real trousers.

And now? The ranger was a proper fighter, it was true, but he'd been hoping for someone a little less lubberly. To say nothing of the last one, which was practically an insult. "How a bard wound up in the Fire Crystal of all places is beyond my reckoning."

He realized before he saw Lenna's smile the plank he'd just stepped off of. "There's one way to find out, isn't there?"

* * *

"Are you sure this thing can carry all four of us?" said Galuf as they climbed onto the black chocobo.

"Karnak's knights would fight from their chocobos in pairs," Lenna reassured him. "They weighed about the same as the four of us when they were fully armored."

"And we're not riding him into battle anyway," said Bartz behind her. Normally he would be at the reins, but on this journey Faris would be the one directing them, mostly because he could look down without getting sick. Bartz leaned down awkwardly to pat the bird's flank. "You can carry four of us, can't you, boy? Of course you can!"

Faris rolled his eyes and dug his heels in. "Up, you oversized seagull!" The bird _warked_ and rose into the air. To his surprise, Lenna was right. Not that she didn't usually know what she was talking about when it came to scholar's business. Still, Faris wasn't about to tax it with a round-the-world flight. They had agreed to start their search for the Earth Crystal by flying around the southern end of the world. Despite the chocobo's ease, it was hard to feel totally secure above the ocean, and so the mountain range they sighted came as a welcome sight. The buzzing sound from the valley they touched down in, though, came less so. Faris thought he'd landed close enough to the little village in the middle of the forest, but there was no way they were reaching it without a fight. Bartz shook off his shakes and shared a look with the three of them. "It's gotten wild around here," he said. "We ought to clear things out."

Moment of truth time, Faris thought. He unshipped the lyre they'd picked up back in Crescent and plucked a string at random. That provoked a cringe. Not himself cringing, but the ghost of a cringe around his limbs. The spirit of the bard didn't admonish him with anything so definite as words, but Faris could feel ancient instincts prompting his movements, showing him how to tuck the instrument against his sternum and where to grip its arm. It was a sensation he'd felt before with the spirits who'd mastered the few weapons a pirate captain hadn't wielded, but there was something different between an ethereal being showing him how to grip a katana and one telling him how to rest his thumb against the C string, and which string was C, and by the way A and B and D because this happens to be a whole _scale_.

Before Faris had time to interrogate, his fingers started moving over the strings in a march. The notes suffused their ears with a wholesome healing aura. Even as a goblin slashed through the old man's berserker furs, the wound closed before Bartz needed to do any white magery. Huh. Maybe there was something to this kind of magic after all--

Another goblin nearly slashed him with its rusted knife. Faris' leg muscles jumped with the effort of staying where he was, and he glared down at them as Lenna's rapier flashed into view in defense. He gripped the lyre afresh and strummed harder to stop the strange quivering in his nerves, and then a huge mass of yellow and black fuzz filled his vision right alongside a spike of pain ramming through his thigh.

Faris snarled, raising the instrument to smash the giant bee's eye right out of its head. But as he shifted his weight to strike, the crimson blood flowering across the soft white leg of his trousers seized his gaze. 

The next thing he knew, he was staring at a caterpillar, which stared back in shock at finding an adult human curled up and quivering in its shrubbery. A cackle brought Faris back to the present. The old man, no longer in berserker furs, had swiped the Healing Staff from Bartz and raised it now with a look of unholy glee.

Afterwards, Faris threw the crystal shard at Lenna. "I'm not going to waste my time trying to find a spine in this one. You think there's courage in here, you dig it out."


	2. Chapter 2

The town was called Lix, Bartz told them as they entered in the fading light. He didn't give them any reason to think it was more than somewhere he'd passed through as a traveler until a little girl pelted across the town square and hurled herself at him to be picked up and swung in a circle. The instant she was back on the ground she was off, yelling at the top of her lungs that Bartz was back.

"I'll rustle us up some grub," Galuf announced loudly, striding off. Other villagers were moving towards them, and Bartz drifted their way as old neighbors greeted him with an ear-to-ear-smile or a clap on the shoulder or a big hug. The little girl ran up to Lenna, seizing her briefly around the middle. "Thanks for taking care of Bartz for us!"

Lenna smiled. Wasn't it just like Bartz, she thought, to bring them to his hometown without saying a word about it?

"Inn's over that way," Faris said, coming back. "You tired, Lenna?"

"I'm all right. That flight was refreshing, wasn't it?" Lenna giggled as Faris crossed her arms. She oughtn't tease, though; she knew Faris was still embarrassed over what had happened with the bard. "But we should go eat, or Galuf will be a bear in the morning."

The innkeeper took one look at Bartz when they walked in the door and gave them the room free for the night. When Lenna awoke the next morning, she could already smell bacon and eggs frying. Yet Bartz was nowhere to be seen, and there wasn't any sign of Faris either. It wasn't until she'd finished eating that they drifted back, Bartz with a pack stocked with provisions and Faris with a strange, shuttered expression.

Lenna thought back to last night. She had been too much in sleep to know if it was real or not, but she had thought she'd heard someone getting up. Now that she was awake, watching Bartz and Faris eat in total silence, she was sure of it. And she was equally sure she wasn't going to find out what had happened between them. At another time, she would have tried to ask Faris about it. But after what had happened in Tycoon, she didn't think so. That had been a while ago, and it didn't hurt as much to think about now, but it still gave Lenna a healthy sense of caution when it came to asking questions of her older sister.

Because she was sure of that, too. Faris wouldn't have been so vehement in her denial if she hadn't known that Lenna was right.

Bartz's next stop when breakfast was over was his old house, which "some bard" had evidently moved into. Lenna found the man outside; he'd obviously left to give Bartz some privacy in exploring his childhood home. "Ah! I know who you are," he said. "You're one of the crystal bearers!"

"Crystal bearers?" That, and not defender. No, of course not. They hadn't succeeded in doing anything more than be present for the moment of three out of the four crystals' destruction, she thought with a pang.

"Yes! Like the warriors of eld." It was a good thing he'd said that to her and not the others, Lenna thought, because she recognized that _eld_ was just a poetically old-fashioned way of saying _old._ "Like Dorgann. They tell me he was a warrior from a faraway land. And that a faraway land is where he died." He looked back towards the house. "I had thought of asking his son, but..." He trailed off. In the silence, the sweet, plinking notes of a music box drifted from the window. And then they stopped, snapped shut.

"I don't suppose," said the bard, "that you know much about Dorgann? All anyone here can tell me is that he came from somewhere else."

"I didn't even know this was Bartz's hometown," said Lenna. She contemplated the little ordinary house with its thatched roof and whitewashed walls. When she had wondered about where Bartz might have come from, this was the sort of place she had pictured--simple, humble, unassuming. But now that she was here, she knew that this town and what it meant to Bartz contained more than she could understand. "He doesn't talk much about that kind of thing."

The bard nodded. Idly, he began fiddling with his lyre, twisting the pegs minutely, plucking the string, twisting again. Lenna watched studiously. Her bard had taught her how to do that, though she still needed practice; this bard could do it without having to pay attention. "And so Dorgann's son returns to his father's adopted home, on a journey of his own, with companions as strange as Dorgann once was--" He blushed at Lenna's giggle. "Strange to Lix, I mean."

"You're a stranger to Lix as well," Lenna pointed out. "What drew you here?"

"The road through the mountains is no easy journey," said the bard. "But there are songs in this valley. A sojourner from afar seeking to protect his new home... the traces of the ancient warriors, the ones who defeated the world's most powerful evil. So many of the old stories have been lost, or hidden, or broken. Those warriors gave up everything to stop Enuo. I think they deserve to have the truth of their tales known."

Everything, Lenna thought. Yes, she knew the stories too. Numerous and contradictory they might be, but they had still prepared her for the moment in the Wind Shrine when fragments of shattered crystal had spoken to them. And besides the stories, when her father had first taken her to visit the Wind Crystal as a girl, Lenna had seen them--ghostly images of the mages and the fighters, only there in the reflections of the facets. She asked him about it then. All he had been able to tell her for sure was that they had gone to fight Enuo and never returned.

Back then, as a child, Lenna had wondered how someone could make a choice from which there would be no return road. She didn't wonder that anymore.

The bard finished tuning his lyre, giving it a strum to satisfy himself that everything sounded right. "There are all sorts of songs. I'm trying to find which ones are true--so I seek out those places where they seem to meet."

"Which ones meet here?" Lenna asked.

"There is a song of the ancient bard that mentions a hidden village of the northern mountains. And there are songs of the ninja who lived in the shadows, and they all start in such a place. And there is one song about their great friendship." Behind her shoulder, Lenna felt the bard stir. "A strange thought, isn't it? But I mean to find out the life of my ancient forebear in this profession." He smiled. "And who knows? One day it may lead me to their harp. Except I don't want to think about an instrument that hasn't been tuned in a millennium."

In the space where the ancient spirit looked over her shoulder, Lenna felt an answer: _It survives._ Entirely indignant that anyone would think such an instrument would be subject to the ravages of a mere thousand years.

* * *

Thoughtful, Lenna went in search of Faris, and her first and last stop was the weapons shop. Sure enough, there was Faris, glowering critically at the smith's handiwork, and there was the young shop assistant, looking both impatient and afraid, which was the usual look of shop assistants when Faris was in their establishment. Lenna smiled, wondering if Faris noticed that at all. "Are your weapons in need of repair already?"

Faris shot her a look. "I just want to see the color of their steel," she said, too firmly to be convincing. After the incident with the bard, she'd grabbed the ninja crystal back again, and had proceeded to fight with its stealth and finesse for about ten seconds before lighting into the monsters like they'd just stolen her drink. "Anyway, look at these, would you? If I did want to get a new kit for that one, I wouldn't need to stop anywhere else."

She gestured towards the weapons that the smith had wired to the wall to show off his skill. Yes, there were kunai, those short leaf-shaped blades with the ring for a pommel. There was a short single-bladed star. And scattered around like a hostile constellation were the four-pointed throwing stars, sharp as a pin and looking like they wanted to fly off the wall. It wasn't just _some_ ninja weapons. It was _all_ ninja weapons.

"Oh my... they really aren't selling anything else." Then she turned to the assistant. "Why do you only sell weapons for ninja?"

Faris twitched, because doing something so obvious and artless as just _asking_ hadn't occurred to her. The assistant perked up.

"Why, it's the fine old martial art of Lix! You didn't know that?" He laughed. "That's because it's a secret!"

It was a secret that the sold openly in the shop... But he was right, Lenna thought. Who would expect fearsome shadowy fighters to be from a place as isolated and unassuming as this? "You're right. I think this town is a perfect place for ninja."

Faris snorted in either amusement or exasperation or both, bought a handful of scrolls, and stomped back outside. Lenna, ignoring her evident mood, followed and decided to press something. "I met the bard that moved into Bartz's old house. He was telling me about the ancient warriors--the spirits in our crystals." 

She related what the bard had told her. As she guessed, Faris didn't look at all convinced. "Sounds to me like he's taken one of the rum stories into his head," she said. "Why the devil would a ninja hang around with someone whose job is making a spectacle of himself? Even if the lad did have any sinews besides the ones on his harpstrings, which he doesn't."

"There must be a reason that the Bard was taken into the Fire Crystal," said Lenna firmly. Faris needed to give the idea a fair chance, and Lenna was going to see that she did, regardless of Faris' own notions of what counted as brave and what didn't. "Why don't you ask the Ninja about it?"

"The Ninja isn't saying one bleeding thing to me right now, that's why. Happy? He doesn't remember a thing about that milksop bard except that it _is_ a bard, but somehow he's gotten into a huff about it anyway." Faris glowered towards the opposite corner of the village, where the little graveyard was. "I don't know how it is you get so worked up about someone you can't even remember."

Again, Lenna wondered what Faris and Bartz had talked about. Again, Lenna thought about how she'd found Faris on the balcony in Tycoon. Alone, brooding, deep in thought... there couldn't have been a more perfect time to talk about what they both knew. Because Faris surely did know. She had seen their resemblance, she had the same pendant--she recognized the castle. Lenna had tried so hard to understand it since that night, why Faris would so violently deny what had to be obvious to them both. "They might not remember exactly what events happened," she said, looking straight at her sister. "But they remember their feelings. When you don't remember what happened, you can still trust your feelings about it."

"Is that so, then." Faris turned away. "We ought to ask around about the Earth Crystal. If it's true about the Bard and the Ninja, who knows what kind of secrets this little place is hiding."

* * *

"The Earth Crystal?" said an old woman by the well. "Oh no, dear, we don't have that kind of thing in these parts."

"Earth Crystal?" said the young shop assistant who had boasted so proudly of Lix's connection to the ninja arts. "I've never seen one on this continent."

"My parents say that crystals aren't magic, and it's actually the sun's heat making the wind move around and vast plates moving around under our feet to cause earthquakes! And the other planet controls the tides, and fire just happens!" This was the declaration of the little girl who'd run into Bartz for a hug. "But they also say that the Earth one is waaay to the west of here."

Lenna didn't know if any of this counted as actual information. She suspected that they would simply have to check in with Cid and Mid again and see if they'd unearthed anything in the meantime at the Library. But she didn't count this as a wasted trip--it was just the opposite. They might not have found out where the Earth Crystal was, but they'd found a way towards other important things. And even if they hadn't, Bartz had been able to visit his hometown. He still wasn't saying anything about that as they loaded up the black chocobo in preparation for their flight to Istory, but everything else about him declared how important it had been to him. With one last wave at the people of Lix, the four Light Warriors climbed onto their bird and took off.


End file.
